


For His Love to Flee

by Smol_Lydia (amutemockingjay)



Category: Beetlejuice - All Media Types, Beetlejuice - Perfect/Brown & King
Genre: Angst, Dark, F/M, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things, i’m sorry I’m gonna hurt your feelings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-03
Updated: 2020-12-03
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:34:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24064396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amutemockingjay/pseuds/Smol_Lydia
Summary: Lydia Deetz tries to have a fresh start. College, across the country, the poltergeist that she was married to nowhere to be found. Until she makes one choice she can never take back, that will bring the pair together in a reminder that some ties are unbreakable.
Relationships: Beetlejuice/Lydia Deetz
Comments: 13
Kudos: 41





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Y’all I write dark stuff, and I want to say I’m sorry but I’m not. If you catch the VW reference we’re speaking the same language.

Sorority Row in the university district is always alive. Young women spill out of the elaborate Victorian homes, arm in arm. Laughter rings out between open windows, and there’s the ever present fraternity guys, ready to serenade a lucky few with their off key voices and golden smiles. Fog rolls in from the Sound, wrapping around ankles and bringing a chill, sending students into warm rooms and each other’s arms. 

And then there’s Lydia Deetz. Strange and unusual Lydia Deetz who moved halfway across the country for a fresh start but finds she fits in here just as well as she did at Miss Shannon’s. Which is to say not at all. Loneliness causes an ever persistent ache between her ribs, hammers into every part of her until she no longer recognizes herself. Hand weighed down by a wedding ring that she can’t bring herself to be rid of, even if the undead husband in question left on his vision quest, never to return. 

Huddled into her wool coat she stumbles down the alleyway between houses, a forty-foot stretch that should have better lighting but never does. She doesn’t realize she isn’t alone until she hears the clatter of books against pavement. A student she doesn’t recognize, with crutches trying to load his supplies into a tan VW bug. He asks for help, and she obliges. Of course she would. 

Lonely as she is, she wouldn’t turn down a stranger who needs help. She didn’t know, couldn’t know, that doing so would be the biggest mistake she’s ever made in her short life. 

And further away still, a certain carousing demon would feel as though he is being impaled all over again. 

* * *

The girls at Dante’s know Beetlejuice well. He swings by more often than not, ringing up tabs that he claims he will find a way to pay, but never does. 

Their coffers would be replenished by an “anonymous donor” though Miss Trixie herself knew that the Neitherworld bills always arrive stinking of the acrid cigarette smoke belonging to a certain exasperated case worker. 

Whatever kept Beetlejuice out of trouble is a welcome distraction. Leaning up against a tattered headboard, the shirtless demon juices himself up a cigarette, blowing smoke rings at the extra large mirror that graces the ceiling. The call girl that had been his companion for the evening dipped a while ago, leaving him to unsettling thoughts he could never quite push away. 

Namely,  _ her.  _

His Scarecrow, the raven haired little breather that had set him free. In the year and a half since he left the Deetz-Maitland home he peeks in on his wife through her bedroom mirror, in glimpses before she notices. Hell, maybe she does; if anyone could sense the otherworldly it is Lydia Deetz. 

And yet, she never summons him back. Not once does his name cross her lips. He is tired of waiting, of hoping for a breather that clearly didn’t have interest. The fact that he is the one who left her is merely an inconvenient fact. 

If she wants to play that game, fine, the girls at Dante’s suit him well enough. At least that is the lie he tells himself as each meaningless fuck leave him more drained and agitated. 

He never got to have her sweet gothic pussy anyhow. She exists solely in the bedroom of his mind, in a fantasy he only let himself visit every now and again, stroking himself with frantic touch and self deprecating words.

That is, until the pain hit. He is undead; he isnt supposed to feel pain. And yet the scar she had given him when she stabbed him with the art is inflamed anew. 

“Fuck!” He feels as though he is being ripped apart, the jagged flesh burning. He looks down at his body; blood is seeping out of the wound. And somehow, he doesn’t know how, he knows that his wife is in grave danger. 

* * *

She comes to in a wooded clearing. Dazed, disoriented, she looks down at the forest floor only to be met with a sight that leaves an indelible imprint on her psyche. 

Lydia Deetz is hovering over her own dead body.

And the man, the one with that tan Volkswagen, he is hunched over her, his face obscured with a black ski mask. 

In his hands is a hacksaw, destroying what remains of her human self. 

Lydia has never been frightened by the otherworldly, the gruesome, the repulsive. She never thought for a moment that she would stumble upon someone who had the power to destroy her— she, in unholy matrimony with death itself. 

And this time, when she opens her mouth to scream, no one but the wind can hear her. 

  
  
  
  
  



	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Juno wasn't expecting a certain strange and unusual breather to land on her desk, yet here we are.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi hello yes I know I am the worst in terms of my update time. However, in my defense I am chronically ill so I'm just out here doing my best. So apologies for the wait; what used to take me a week can now take months. Regardless, I hope you enjoy this! 
> 
> I was a historian before I got sick and now I just read a lot of true crime and history books in my time bedbound, so a lot of this is lifted from/influenced by a particular case. Give your best guess in the comments.

Juno always has paperwork to do. She lights herself a cigarette and stares at the endless stack, her free hand massaging her temple out of habit. Pain, of course, doesn’t exist in her world, but that shape-shifting demon who stole her appearance to enter the human realm and threaten those breathers— the Deetz family, she vaguely remembers— created enough paperwork to keep an exasperated case worker such as herself busy for the next century. And, of course, Beetlejuice marrying that breather girl added another stack. 

A stack that becomes upended when said breather girl materializes on top of Juno’s desk with a thud. 

“Miss Deetz!”

Lydia blinks, taking in the scene. “Great,” she mutters, hopping off the desk in one delicate motion. “This is just what I need.” 

Juno peers at the young woman over the top of her glasses. “And you have materialized in my office because….”

Lydia crosses her arms over her chest. “Believe me, if I had a choice I wouldn’t.” 

Juno reaches into one of her desk drawers. The breather girl is breathing no longer; instead she has the spectral glow of the undead. The Handbook for the Recently Deceased should cover all scenarios, but her mischief-making former assistant could not be so easily confined to its pages, and Juno fears what this outcome will be for the bride of a demon. 

The door to Juno’s office is pushed open, revealing the unkempt demon with an expression of panic across his features. “Juno, I know I keep fucking up but ya gotta help me, I think something’s happened to Lydia—“

Juno clears her throat, and Beetlejuice takes in the scene in front of him. 

“Beej,” Lydia whispers softly. 

“Lydia,” he murmurs, taking in his newly dead wife, his golden eyes tinged with sadness. “What happened?”

* * *

_ Six months earlier _

“Shots, shots, shots!” 

Lydia rolls her eyes. She doesn’t know why she agreed to attend this party. She is far from the party type, but she is trying desperately to forget. Besides, parties were a requirement of new pledges, and even a legacy pledge such as herself isn’t exempt. 

She downs the Bacardi smoothly, with virtually no shudder. She is drunk, very drunk. Music blasts from a tall stereo in the corner. A passing frat boy, holding the requisite red cup, bumps into her. 

“Sorry,” she mumbles. 

She would rather deck him, but she can’t be seen starting a fight. It would reflect badly on the others, of course. He sizes her up, lingering on her chest. She knows she isn’t particularly blessed in this area, willowy and wispy that she is, but the few pounds she’s gained as a first-year has given a little more thickness to her frame. 

“Wanna get out of here?” He asks, and she shrugs her shoulders. She could care less what he thinks or wants. She hasn’t been with anyone since-- the pain hits her again, in that moment, the grief she tries so hard to bury. 

Technically, she had never been intimate with her undead husband. It’s the yearning that eats away at her, that leaves her with a hole in her heart. Things had been so mixed up with them-- the lies, the manipulations, the fact that she felt no other choice than to stab him. And then he was gone, on some vision quest or another. 

She never gets to tell him that she’s sorry. That no one before or since has understood her the way he did. She will not let herself consider that her longing is anything other than platonic. 

She slips out of the frat house without notice; though she is far from conventional appearance wise, Lydia has gained a knack for navigating spaces without notice. 

The Pacific Northwest damp has soaked into everything she owns, and tonight is no exception as a light drizzle coats her black hair, soon hanging in stringy strands in front of her eyes. It’s not so far back to the apartment she shared with a few other girls that she is somewhat close with— as close as one can be without having to explain everything. 

A dark haired boy is hanging in front of her building. She doesn’t remember him before, but that’s not unusual in the University District. Lydia pulls her keys out of her purse and in doing so, trips. The boy reaches out to steady her, his brown eyes meeting her own. 

“Careful,” he says, and gives her a small smile. 

Though there is nothing out of the ordinary about him, she can’t help but shiver. Rushing to the elevator she heads back to her apartment, putting the boy out of her mind. 

She didn’t know then that they would meet again. How could she? And what could she have done? 

* * *

Part of her wants to fall into Beetlejuice’s arms when he asks her what happened. Still, she holds back. There’s so much she wants to say, she doesn’t know where to start. 

He seems to sense that there’s something keeping her from pouring her heart out. In one smooth motion he is by her side, and he scoops her up, bridal-style. 

“Where do you think you’re going, Beetlejuice? She needs to be processed like every other new arrival! The paperwork…” Juno has her pale hands on her hips. 

“Don’t sweat it, Juney,” Beetlejuice replies. “I’ll have ‘er back in no time.” With a snap of his fingers they are gone, and in an entirely different space. 

The building they land in has most definitely seen better days. The garish paint, greens and blues, is chipped and peeling off the walls. On the front door a battered sign that reads “The Roadhouse” though it looks mostly abandoned now. There’s a ratty couch with tufts of fabric and stuffing missing, and crushed beer cans with various other piles of garbage on the sagging wood floors. 

Beetlejuice is muttering something about Jacques not being home, though Lydia has no idea who Jacques is. She steps gingerly around broken glass though she knows now that she’s dead it can’t hurt her— old habits die hard. 

“Beetlejuice do you really live like this?” 

He has enough shame to look slightly embarrassed at this. “Well if I knew yer were coming I would have cleaned.” 

“Sure.” She rolls her eyes. 

He brushes some trash off of the sofa and gestures to it. “You can sit here, if you want.” 

She takes the offer but can’t resist the jab. “I hope you don’t bring any of your conquests here or they’ll run for the door.” 

“Like you bringing a breather boyfriend to your college dorm would be any different.”

“I was living in a sorority house, actually. I didn’t have a boyfriend. Haven’t dated anyone since….” she twists the wedding ring around her finger. Why is she even talking about this? 

“Since what?” He can hardly believe it but if he wasn’t dead he would be holding his breath in anticipation of her response. Stupid. 

“Since you blackmailed me into marrying you.” 

There it is. The unspoken tension between the two of them, the marriage he claimed was a green card thing but is anything but. 

“Well I mean, babes, you don’t gotta put it that way…” 

“Oh, so you weren’t a manipulative bastard desperate for a get out of jail free card so you used me to do so?” She didn’t realize until this moment that she is angry. Angry that she got manipulated, angry that she was used, and abandoned until she found herself in this situation. 

“It isn’t like that,” he says. 

She puts her hands on her hips. “Oh, then what is it like?” 

“Never mind,” he snaps. “Point is the Neitherworld don’t give a shit about ‘until death do you part.’ we’re stuck together babes, till the end of time.” 

“Fantastic,” she mutters. 

“Now, are yer gonna tell me how you ended up on Juney’s desk or do I gotta figure that out myself.” 

Emotional whiplash— that is what Lydia feels, from anger to sadness to shame as to how she ended up screaming at her undead husband. That maybe she could pretend it is all a bad dream, until he asks for answers. 

She hangs her head. How could she have been so stupid. Squeezing her eyes shut she tried to ward off the memories that begin to overwhelm her, of those final moments. She doesn’t realize she is trembling from head to toe until she feels Beetlejuice’s arm around her waist, steadying her. That’s when he notices the purple bruises on her neck, courtesy of her murderer. 

“What’s this, babes? Who did this to yer?” There’s a dark, dangerous look in his golden-green eyes. 

She shrugs her shoulders. “I don’t know.” Not out of any desire to protect the person who attacked her—fuck no—but because other than the night of the party, she had never seen him before. 

“How do you not know? What’s going on, babes?” 

“I don’t know who he is!” Lydia explodes, rounding on the demon. “I only saw him once besides that night, okay? I was stupid. So stupid.” 

Then the tears fall, big ugly heaving sobs that shake her shoulders and wrack her body. 

“Why didn’t you call for me? You know I could snap a breather’s neck in seconds.” 

“Because I didn’t think you’d care,” she says flatly. 

Beej looks like he’s been punched, the hurt flashing across his expression for a brief moment before he manages to cover his pain with fury. His hair changes red. “I’ll string him up,” he swears. Turning to Lydia, “what do you say to a little revenge?”

She wipes the tears away. She doesn’t like him to see her pain, her weakness. She supposes that she isn’t the delicate little human the demon first met, not any longer. “What about Juno?” 

Lydia doesn’t want to risk getting on the bad side of the cantankerous woman even more than she already has. 

Beetlejuice shrugs. “I’ll deal with her babes. For now, let’s wreck some havoc.” 


End file.
